Miss Saigon- Page 2

[theatermom4]

Posted: 2/20/05 at 9:27pm

I remember those lyrics now about how Chris didn't talk for a year...thanks for the info about getting the c.d. I'm determined to find it!

[noahrp3]

Posted: 2/22/05 at 11:31pm

I also saw the one in Fullerton. I thought the sets were awesome, but the cast was a little weak. Its not my favorite show, but it was much more interesting than Les Mis (god, that was boring!!!)

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 2/22/05 at 11:35pm

Who plays John now? The John I saw in spring 2003 was excellent.

[Barnaby12345]

Posted: 2/22/05 at 11:46pm

The John I saw on tour in 2004 was unbelievable. His Bui Doi is by far the best I've ever heard (EVEN better than Warlow's!)

[ElTico68]

Posted: 2/22/05 at 11:49pm

The 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle is staging it in the spring... I have never been interested in the show (yeah, one of those that dismisses it as "that helicopter show", but after reading this, and finding out that a friend is in it, I'm totally going to try to ge tickets.

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 2/22/05 at 11:50pm

ElTico, I was the same way. I was never interested in the show. It's still not one of my favorites. But the sets and costuming are really amazing.

[WickedElphie85]

Posted: 2/22/05 at 11:51pm

The Kim in the Fullerton production is my voice teacher. She said that the rehearsal process was tough because the cast and crew were looking to her for direction because they didn't know what they were doing. :) She said she blocked all of Kim and Chris's scenes.

[theatermom4]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 1:14am

In the Fullerton production, John was played by Maceo Oliver...his bio doesn't show that he played this part before.

Wicked...has Kristine been your vocal teacher very long?

[Racetrack]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 1:28am

I haven't seen Miss Saigon yet, but plan to see it in April or May with my boyfriend when it hit's the 5th Ave Theatre, but I've loved the music for two years now and it's one of my favorite musicals. I'll have to bring a whole box of kleenex I'll be so choked up.

I like both recordings, but the only problem I have with the CSR is that I am not a big fan of Peter Cousens. I don't think he did a bad job, I just found I didn't enjoy him as much as Simon Bowman.

[WickedElphie85]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 1:38am

theatermom - I've been taking lessons from her for about a year; she teaches speech level singing.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 2:04am

I'm surprised so many regional theaters are putting on this show. It seems so costly. How do they afford having a helicopter fly in the show?

[Musetta1957]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 2:09am

They don't.

And they don't need to.

[bially082]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 2:59am

All I have to say is that I've got tickets to the show in April. We'll see how it goes. I havn't heard many good things about this show.

[eatlasagna]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 6:11am

wickedelphie... hmm... based on what kristine said... it does show that the cast doesn't know what they are doing... hopefully that'll change when i see the show again... hopefully the director fully understands what this show is about and get help the actors to do something.... oh well... still loved it.. ha

[WickedElphie85]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 9:26am

Kristine deffinitley took on more responsibility than she was expecting. I'm really excited to see it though, I'm going this Sunday. Anyone else going?

[theatermom4]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 12:24pm

wicked...i'm sure kristine is a great teacher. (i have never heard of speech level singing! can u enlighten me?

[keggss23]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 12:35pm

I saw the current national tour back in June. I like the show, not one of my favorites, but none the less, I was excited to see it - especially because I had great seats and they were half price. My parents saw it a few years ago and raved anout it. I was so disappointed! The show itself is good with a great book and music, the cast however, was awful. The guy who played Chris was waaaay to feminine for anyone to beleive that he was in love with a girl, let alone two. Kim had an amazing voice, but her acting was ok at best and the girl who played Ellen was just unbeleivably annoying. I pretty much felt that the entire cast was just going through the motions without putting any energy or emotion behind anything they were doing. Maybe they were tired from traveling or something, but I was really upset that I didn't enjoy it more. I think this could have been a great experience, but I didn't feel any emotion at any point during the show because the cast was so indifferent. I would definitely suggest seeing this show though because I think with better performances it can be really powerful.

[WickedElphie85]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 2:42pm

Sure! It's a technique in which the muscles and everything in the throat are in "speech-level posture" while singing. I always use to raise my larynx and tighten throat muscles when I would sing, and SLS teaches you not to do that.
And Kristine is great - she's a really fun teacher.

[eslgr8]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 8:06pm

After reading the following review, even more positive than the comments already posted, here, I am so excited about seeing the show tomorrow!!!
"'Miss Saigon' is a direct hit
A vocally vibrant Fullerton staging stresses the tragic tone of the popular musical's doomed romance.

By ERIC MARCHESE
Special to the Register

Watching American troops struggling in war-torn Vietnam in the epic musical "Miss Saigon," it's hard not to think of today's military personnel in Iraq - or any conflict that plunges young men into a strange land.

The show's real focus, though, is a romance, almost doomed from the start, between an American Marine named Chris and a young Vietnamese girl named Kim, with the war as a backdrop. Violent and unpredictable as that backdrop may be, "Miss Saigon" is essentially a contemporary opera derived from Verdi's "Madame Butterfly."

Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg have crafted an opera-like show that is sung, with no dialogue. Only Schonberg's music and Boublil's lyrics (Richard Maltby Jr. helped Boublil adapt them from French into English) tell the story. The show's pitch is as feverish and overwrought as that of any opera – fitting, in light of the American experience in Vietnam.

That sense of disorientation is readily apparent in Fullerton Civic Light Opera's revival of the musical, one of the biggest stage hits of the 1980s. In a vocally vibrant staging, director Jan Duncan's principal cast and chorus emphasize the story's dichotomy - how nearly impossible it is for love to flourish in wartime, yet how love can give those struggling in horrible conditions a reason to live.

Musical director Todd Helm has an exquisite understanding of the sweeping score, whose purpose is more connective than in most musicals. The only true hit is the caustic "The American Dream," and the lyrics - some pungent, some pedestrian - outweigh the melodies. But Helm and his singers and orchestra invest the music with the tragic flair of grand opera.

Kristine Remigio's Kim is, at 17, wise and stoical beyond her years. Her solid pop vocal style is well-suited to the score, and she conjures the purity of love Kim feels for Chris, as well as Kim's determination to get their young son to the U.S.

Blake Pullen matches her as Chris, who never quite figured out the puzzle of Vietnam. But it is the searing Bonifacio Deoso Jr., as Kim's spurned would-be husband, who has the most electrifying scenes with Remigio. As Chris' American wife, Kelly Lamont elicits Pullen's strongest scenes, her Ellen as sympathetic in her own way as Kim.

Franc Anton Harwart lives up to his star billing as the wheeler-dealer called "The Engineer," reveling gleefully in this ultimate mercenary's cynicism, scurrying about, scraping for any advantage in an entertaining display of the man's boundless chutzpah and single-mindedness.

The show's most famed set pieces feature a massive military helicopter and a 1959 Cadillac convertible - singular props that are to "Miss Saigon" what that crashing chandelier is to Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera." Those props are present in this grand staging, whose scope is broadened by Dustin J. Cardwell's expansive, ingenious scenic design, costumes by Mela Hoyt-Heydon that juxtapose the military uniforms against the exotic look of the Far East, and sinewy dance steps by choreographer Ray A. Rochelle that underscore the brutality of war."

[eslgr8]

Posted: 2/23/05 at 8:24pm

I found this fascinating article via google.com, which explains how the Fullerton Civic Light Opera is able to put on such sumptuous productions. They rent out the sets they construct and it pays for 25% of their expenses. I subscribed this season because they're offering the first locally produced productions of Miss Saigon, the new Broadway version of Flower Drum Song (which debuted at the Taper a few years ago but apparently went through a number of book/song/cast changes before the Broadway move), Once On This Island, and Aida (it will be interesting to see how their production this fall compares with the recent tour which played in Pasadena.)
How FCLO puts on such lavish shows

[jackson992]

Posted: 2/24/05 at 5:05pm

oh no someone mentioned the song Please. Now I will have it in my head the whole day. It is one of my favorite songs in the whole show and the whole show is superb. Definitely one of the best musicals ever. If you want to buy, I would buy both the Original and the Concept. The Concept I got mainly because I wanted to see what was left of the Original. I love the nightmare sequence with Kim and Thuy.

[Love4Cheno]

Posted: 2/24/05 at 5:22pm

If you like the song "Please" have you heard "Too Much For One Heart?" This was the original song, and it was changed to "Please" in order to further the story along.

Too Much For One Heart is a Kim solo, to the same melody as Please. Schoenberg said it was his favorite song.

Lea Salonga performed it for the only time ever in a concert, and it's on her Broadway Concert cd.

[eslgr8]

Posted: 2/25/05 at 3:31am

I can highly recommend FCLO's production after seeing it tonight. All the lead performances were excellent (though Kelly (Ellen) Lamont's affected pronunciation bothered me. Franc-Anton Harwart is a scene-stealing engineer, Kristin Remigio who has played Kim on Broadway and up-and-coming boyishly cute Blake Pullen were excellent as well. This is regional theater at its best. Amazing how they can put together this calibre production in so little time. Problems noted by previous posters (lack of precision in the dancing, long blackouts) seemed to have been solved. Next up for FCLO is the new Flower Drum Song. Can't wait!

[theatermom4]

Posted: 2/25/05 at 12:15pm

So, now that I have seen Miss Saigon...should I add Flower Drum Song to my "must see" list?

[eslgr8]

Posted: 2/26/05 at 3:01am

I loved the new Flower Drum Song so much that I went back a second time when it was playing at the Taper and would have gone back again had it played longer, but the final shows were sold out (and that was before you could get 1/2 price tickets through goldstarevents.com.) David Henry Hwang's new book completely revitalized the show, allowing the lovely Rodgers and Hammerstein songs to really shine. The choreography was spectacular. It will be quite different at FCLO if only because the Taper is a smaller theater with a thrust stage, and doubtless the Taper production was all Equity whereas the FLCO will be a mix of Union and non-Union performers. Still, I really want to see it again, and some relatively major changes were made to the one of the subplots between L.A. and Broadway. Because it's hard for Asian actors to get good roles in big musicals, I wouldn't be surprised to see a number of the original leads reprise their roles, though not Lea Salonga, I would guess.